Comment that really ticks me off.........

Nursing Students General Students

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Specializes in ICU/CCU/MICU/SICU/CTICU.

Ok, maybe Im just being petty, but the other day I went to see a patient whos neighbor was visiting..... we were having a nice conversation then the neighbor asked me "Where did you get your training ?"

I have seen the subject debated over different entry level degrees and such, but the word "training" just ticks me off. When I told him that I graduated from "XYZ University", his comment was "Oh you had to go to college?"

Why is it that people do not believe that nurses actually go to college?? I mean I can understand if the patient and his neighbor was 80+ yrs old, I know that years ago, nurses did not go to a university setting........ but these 2 men were in their early 40's!!!

What is the difference in nurses taking specialized classes in pharmacology, anatomy, chemistry, etc than a person who has a degree in computers taking specialized classes in programming or networking, etc.....

Those people are considered educated at a college level, but nurses are just trained

Is it just me, or do any of you see this too??????

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Well, I guess you can say that you can go to college without being educated such as the case with the two you were talking about. The truth is many people have blinders, not thinking about anyone's education than their own. I wouldn't waste my time worrying about these ignorant people. JMHO.

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Specializes in Utilization Management.
Why is it that people do not believe that nurses actually go to college??
Because nurses have such lousy PR, that's why. We need to stop acting like victims of "them," get the word out, and take control of our profession.

I got my enlightenment about this issue from the book "From Silence to Voice," by Bernice Buresh and Suzanne Gordon. This book needs to be on every nurse's "Required Reading" list. Here's the website:

http://silencetovoice.com/

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or maybe he didnt mean anything by his comment and just plainly wanted to know where you went to school. probably his biggest mistake was his "lack-of-a-better-word-for-training", which comes off as offensive to some ppl, to which is understandable. over where i am, nurses are respected (at least by pts). they understand the amt of responsibility and care that they provide for pts, and they get a lot of respect for that.

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Specializes in Utilization Management.
or maybe he didnt mean anything by his comment and just plainly wanted to know where you went to school.

I didn't think that because of what he said later:

When I told him that I graduated from "XYZ University", his comment was "Oh you had to go to college?"

Now I'm curious, CardoTrans. How did you answer him? I hope your response included some of this, because word-of-mouth is so useful in teaching the public what we do and how educated we have to be to do it.

nurses taking specialized classes in pharmacology, anatomy, chemistry

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Ooops my bad, didnt read it thoroughly. The guy is clearly ignorant, probably hasnt been in a hospital his whole life and its obvious he doesnt know what it takes to be a nurse. This guy just needed to be educated.

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Specializes in ICU/CCU/MICU/SICU/CTICU.

Well, after the feeling come back in my tongue from biting it............

I did tell him that nurses have to go to college. The patient that I was seeing saw my face and he helped the situation out and asked what kind of classes that nurses have to take, and I took it from there... I told him about the basic education classes that are required, then went into detail about some of the nursing classes and being the type of person that I am, made sure that I went into detail about how certain medicines worked on the CV system (the pt had had an MI) and how the blood flowed.....to prove that nurses ARE educated and made sure that some of the things I said went over the neighbors head.

Im just sarcastic that way when it comes to nursing. People have to realize that we are no longer just the doctors servant or maid. That we actually have a mind of our own and that we actually do collaborate with the physician.

I may be blonde........ but I am intelligent

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Specializes in Utilization Management.

Very good answer!

I had to practice a little on what to say. It sounded a little awkward the first couple of times, but now it just flows right along.

True story:

I'm in the hallway charting and my tech is going around doing I&O's. I see that she's finishing up in Room 5 and is about ready to go to Room 6. A doc walks out of Room 6, comes up to me and says, "Umm, would you mind helping the patient in Room 6 with his urinal? I told him I didn't go to school all those years to assist him with that." (laugh)

So I smiled brightly, nodded, and said, "Why of course, doctor, I certainly will get right on that!"

He started to walk away, saying, "Good!" while I returned to my charting and called my tech's name and asked her to do it.

The doc turned around in shock and then burst out laughing. "Touche!" he said.

I grinned, pointed my finger and said, "Gotcha."

By continuing to chart, I was doing what I would normally be doing at that hour of the morning. I should clarify that if my tech wasn't available, I would have taken care of the patient, but a) the doc DID ask for it, and b) the tech was nearby and was also a nursing student, so she learned something too.

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I think part of the ignorance comes from seeing commercials on TV about such-and-such school where "In 12 weeks of training, I became a medical professional!" They see the uniform, the stethoscope, etc. and think "nurse."

Yep, it's all about PR. The Johnson & Johnson commercials don't say that nurses are highly educated individuals, either. One wouldn't know from watching the ad that nurses have to go to college for a heck of a long time and that it's an intense education at that.

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Specializes in ICU/CCU/MICU/SICU/CTICU.

I grinned, pointed my finger and said, "Gotcha."

LOL, dont you just love it! :chuckle

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Specializes in ICU/CCU/MICU/SICU/CTICU.

The commercials, like you said, do not do anything for us, other than hurt us.

Lets not even mention the typical stereotypes that have been portrayed about nurses in short skirts, tons of makeup, in very suggestive poses, or soap operas portraying monkeys dressed as nurses.

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Yeah I hate this type of thing. Everyone asks me what I'm doing, and I say I'm in nursing school. "Oh, how do you like it at _________?" Um, no I'm going to a university, thanks a lot. I changed my response to "I'm a nursing major," but sometimes that gets taken the wrong way, too, because everyone at my school thinks that if you say that, you're prenursing. I even had a prenursing girl tell me, "Nursing school and nursing major mean very different things." I never thought about it until then, but she's right.

Everyone outside of school thinks that by nursing I mean part time classes in some shopping center "educational program," but if I told them I was going to school for, say, physics (which I was, but I decided to bump it down to hobby status because there are virtually no good jobs available anytime after graduation) they would know I was actually getting a degree.

It bugs me that my history major roommates do nothing in school, and will graduate with a pretty bleak career future, but no one mistakes them for anything but college students.

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